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Getting Ireland Walking Through the GAA

The GAA is throwing its weight behind RTÉ’s Operation Transformation in January with clubs across the country switching on their lights each Thursday evening between 5 PM and 7 PM to encourage local groups to get walking.

The campaign will run for five weeks and was launched yesterday at Ballyboughal GAA Club in Dublin by GAA President John Horan and Operation Transformation’s Karl Henry.

The club is one of those on the GAA Healthy Club initiative, part of the GAA’s overall social commitment to health and wellbeing in partnership with Irish Life.

It installed a walking track around the main pitch in 2017 and took part in this campaign when it first ran earlier this year.

“We had no idea what numbers we would get, but we had 150, maybe even more,” said Joanne Cahill the Ballyboughal Healthy Club Officer.

“They were coming from everywhere with cars backed up. There were groups of people, families, kids, there was every walk of life.”

Removing obstacles to getting active is an important element of getting towards a fitter nation and the #IrelandLightsUp campaign is a way of using the infrastructure at the clubs in every corner of every county to do just that.